


Ornithomancy

by matchsticks_p (matchsticks)



Series: Ornithomancer [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Birds, Canon-Typical Violence, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, M/M, Multi, mild mention of people with mental illness being treated unfairly (relevant to plot), mildly non-linear, more about Bucky's recovery than expected
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-23
Updated: 2015-07-23
Packaged: 2018-04-10 21:44:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4408955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matchsticks/pseuds/matchsticks_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a world where Sam Wilson might not be able talk to birds, but still thinks he can. Steve and Bucky try their best to do right by him regardless.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ornithomancy

It takes a while for Bucky to realize that there's more to it than just Sam really, really liking birds.

*

In the early days, Bucky only agreed to stay with the Avengers because it seemed to be what Steve wanted. Bucky didn't have wants yet, and he didn't have a plan beyond "keep Steve pacified," so he guessed sticking close to him was what he was supposed to do.

He spent his days letting Stark experiment on him. _Examine_ him, _monitor_ his progress, or _try to help_ him were the verbs Steve preferred, because it was important to him that Bucky be able to tell the difference between Stark and Zola. So Bucky tried to remember to use those words instead when he was in Steve's company. It was an easy enough routine to settle into, familiar, and for his part Stark never tried to do anything horrifying, like make friendly small talk. It was entirely tolerable. 

Bucky spent his nights alternately sleeping and screaming.

A lot of things escaped his notice back in those days, not because he didn't have complete and total situational awareness but because his brain dismissed certain details as irrelevant. Irrelevant to the project of staying alive, the project of not accidentally killing Steve, of regaining his memories, making sure Stark wasn't secretly poisoning him, and generally not getting murdered or worse when he let his guard down. You know, that project. Details like Sam and Steve living in the same quarters were not relevant. 

Besides, Sam wasn't around much and never attempted to interact with Bucky unless Bucky wanted to initiate, which he never did. The only times Sam ever talked to him first were the nights Bucky wouldn't stop screaming. Couldn't stop screaming. Nights when Steve was away or couldn't be in the same room as Bucky because Bucky would put his fists through Steve's face if he saw it, both the metal one and the flesh one, just straight through that perfectly patient and accepting face until it was nothing but a smear. Those were the nights Bucky would stress his cardiac system into overdrive, lose his ability to comprehend language, and Sam would stay with him for no reason that fit logically into Project Stay-Alive-and-Don't-Kill-Steve. 

Sam was very good at saying nonsense. The low murmurs of his voice would wash over Bucky's frayed nerves like liquid velvet, just a tidal rhythm that he didn't have to worry about trying to understand. Sam would crouch on the floor beside him, close enough to be heard but not too close, and talk nonstop until dawn. And when Bucky eventually came back to himself he would start tuning in to the words again, end up catching the tail end of whatever Sam had been saying. It would always be something involving bird identification, like how to tell the differences between the most common sparrows in New York. 

"The white-throated sparrow can be tricky because the adults have two plumage variations. The white-striped form has a black crown with a white strip down the middle, and a black eye line. The tan-striped form has a dark brown crown with a tan central stripe, and a brown eye line. They look different, but you have to remember they're the same species. That's the hard part. They both have white throats, of course—hence the name. The easiest way to tell them apart from other sparrows is by the yellow spot they have in the space between the eye and the beak. We call that spot the lore."

It happened a lot. And then it happened less. Bucky started getting better, feeling safer. Late night crises tapered off and so did the need for Sam to deal with them. Bucky started actually bonding with Steve, for real, beyond his project. Sam receded to give them their space.

The other thing that Bucky failed to notice because it didn't matter was that Sam never kept any bird-watching guidebooks around. He had always spouted those facts from memory.

*

When Sam was really little, too little to be able to tell the difference between a pigeon and a mourning dove, one of those birds saved his sister's life.

She'd gone swimming at a neighbor's pool. There had been some mix-up between the adults and they all thought someone else was watching the kids. Sarah had gotten a cramp right in the middle of the deepest part of the pool. She couldn't get herself to the side and none of the other kids knew what to do. That was what the cooing bird at the window told Sam was happening.

Sam ran to his mom and repeated what the bird said. His parents grabbed him up and sprinted over to the neighbor's house, Sam in his dad's arms, his mom yelling Sarah's name. They found her flailing in the water, sputtering and choking and just starting to go under. They hauled her up out of there and in the sweet rush of relief afterwards, they forgot to tell Sammy that pigeons (or doves) couldn't talk. They covered him in kisses for saving his sister. He insisted the bird was the real hero. He was just little. They let him believe whatever he wanted. They were just glad that everyone was safe. 

Sam never forgets.

*

At a mission briefing that's really more of a brainstorming session because they have so little intel that there are no commands to follow, Tony suggests devising an invisibility cloak for the quinjet so they can parachute into the fort from above.

Sam speaks up to veto that idea immediately. "We would be directly in the arctic tern's migration path, during one of the heaviest traffic days of their migration season. Having invisible engines in that area would basically be a massacre. They're endangered, you know."

" _What?_ " Tony asks.

Sam startles like he just woke up and found himself in the middle of a meeting. "What?"

"I asked you first," Tony says.

"I just mean there are a lot of reasons not to add an aircraft to this scenario. Someone would have to fly it away without getting caught, and then we'd be stranded in enemy territory without a clear way out. It just adds more opportunities for things to go wrong," Sam says.

"He has a good point," Steve says, backing his play. "Plus, if we don't even know what the building layout is like, how can we pick a place to jump? We might end up landing in the fort's least vulnerable spot and then the whole op is blown."

Tony makes a conceding noise, but he doesn't sound happy about it.

Under the table, Steve gives Sam's foot a reassuring nudge or three with his own. Sam gazes out the window at a flock of starlings flying away. He watches until they're out of sight, and then he clears his throat and suggests several alternative plans.

*

The first conversation Bucky ever starts with Sam takes place on the roof of Avengers Tower.

He goes up to there looking to be alone, but Sam's already there, leaning against a railing with his face tilted toward the sky. Because Sam is so perfectly Sam, he offers to leave as soon as Bucky makes his presence known. 

Bucky means to say "you can stay," but for some reason "you know, I spent a lot of time in Russia but I can't remember ever seeing any birds there" comes out of his mouth instead. 

Sam's smile is warm like the setting sun that's bathing them in a pinkish glow. "Siberian cranes," he says, which makes Bucky blink, and it takes him a second to recalibrate to the new rhythms of this conversation that he guesses they're now having. 

"Ravens, woodpeckers, hawks," Sam continues. "All pretty common in Russia, and they're pretty distinctive-looking so you might be able to identify and remember them. There are a lot of passerine birds too, obviously, but people have a tendency to let them fly under the radar. —That's a figure of speech, by the way, not literally a radar," he hastens to clarify for Bucky.

Bucky nods solemnly.

"All the warblers and sparrows and finches kind of look the same from a distance, unless you're really looking to notice them. Sometimes I still can't tell the difference even if I'm trying. Not that it really matters to them. I mean, the category of species is just this thing we made up for ourselves anyway, it has nothing to do with the things they care about...which, if they're finches, is mostly seeds."

Something about Sam's rambling feels familiar, feels like nights just on the edge of Bucky's conscious memories. Before he knows it they're watching the sunset together. Bucky is leaning towards him, leaning into his warmth. They only push away to go back inside when Sam tells him that the pigeons roosting a few floors down are saying goodnight.

* 

Being friends again with Steve is nice, not only for the obvious reason of making Steve happy but also because they're two of a kind. They're both supersoldiers, but they're not aliens or gods or robots, and Bucky feels safe not holding back any of his strength when they spar with each other because he knows they're evenly matched. Even though they might not look it, since one of them has a cyborg arm and the other doesn't. He remembers what Sam said about how the same species can look completely different, while different species can look completely the same.

Bucky is graceful when he aims a swift punch to Steve's kidneys, but he's utterly without grace when he asks about people. With Steve's sweaty body beneath his hands, trying to keep him in a clinch hold, Bucky blurts out, "Why is Sam obsessed with birds?" 

Steve taps out and Bucky lets go, lets him sit up. They sit facing each other on the wrestling mat, Bucky on his knees resting back on his heels and Steve like he might drop and do crunches at any time. Steve has a gentleness in his voice, a fondness in his eyes when he replies, "Oh, he thinks he can talk to them. Or they can talk to him."

"I mean...can he? Can they?" 

Steve shrugs. "That's not really the point. He believes he can, and that's what matters to me. You get that, don't you, Buck?" He gives a rueful little chuckle. "Stark believes that weapons are actually toys and Fury believes he can use people however he wants and I believe humans are born fundamentally good inside—"

("And I believe I'm a thing sometimes, not a person at all but a tool," Bucky doesn’t pipe up to say, because it happens less and less often now and because it would upset Steve.) 

"—so Sam's beliefs aren't even the weirdest ones currently in this building." And Steve's tone is cautious and cajoling at once, like he has to work at making Bucky agree with him and is scared that he won't. 

Bucky experiences a feeling he can't identify right away because it's the first time he's felt it since his fall—he thinks he's...offended. He tries to make his face match that feeling but it just makes Steve look even more cautious, so Bucky has to figure out how to verbalize it to Steve.  
There have been countless moments when Steve should have lost faith in Bucky but didn't, times when it would have been far wiser to cut his losses instead of continuing to believe in Bucky like a big dumb loyal dog to the end of the line. This is not one of those times.

"Did you know there are cranes in Siberia? I never saw any, but they didn't let me see much of anything anyway, and Sam says there are. I believe him."

He doesn't always recognize all of Steve's expressions anymore, but Bucky knows that the face Steve pulls at the mention of his former handlers is disgust, and he knows that the expression that follows after is relief. Steve flops backwards, then, dropping to do the sit-ups his body's been ready for; everything's easier when they don't have to look directly at each other.

"Not everyone understands," Steve says between each carefully controlled inhale and exhale, occasionally catching Bucky's eye for brief half seconds as he rises up and lowers himself down again, "so it's important that he knows we're on his side."

"I believe him," Bucky repeats.

*

Hindu Kush is a beautiful mountainous region, maybe the most beautiful in the world. It's also thick with military presence and too remote for many people to notice when Hydra-affiliated black market arms dealers infiltrate one of the many army bases and take it over, using it as a front for their own operations.

Steve leads them, Tony and Natasha and Sam and Bucky, and it's almost like a breathtaking hiking holiday if they let themselves forget about the part where they'll probably end up killing dozens of people by the end of the day. And that's the best case scenario. 

They've been trooping faithfully behind Steve but truth be told they're not totally sure how they're going to get into the base. It's on further lockdown than their initial reports showed, and breaking in at any of the actual entrances is out of the question. It's an army base, though, not a bomb shelter, and every base of operations has more openings than just the front door. They're hoping to find someone manning a guard station or radio tower.

Bucky spots a distant silhouette in the sky and he's learned enough to recognize that shape as some sort of bird of prey. He reaches out to tap Sam on the shoulder, directs his attention to it, tilts his head at a questioning slant. 

"Saker falcon," Sam says quietly, after a moment. "They're getting rarer and rarer, I didn't think we'd see one."

Up at the front, Steve's ears practically prick up like a dog's, and he swivels to cast one eye over Sam and Bucky. Satisfied that they're not speaking in code about imminent dangers or anything, he turns back to the front just in time to nearly get shot in the face.

It's impossible to tell where the gunfire is coming from, because it feels like everywhere. Steve gets his shield up in the nick of time and no one seems to be hit yet, but there's not much cover to duck behind. Everything is short grasses and scrabbly moss, the rocky landscape dotted here and there with a low bush but not much else. Natasha nimbly vaults behind a boulder and Sam rushes to follow her. 

Tony somehow gets suited up through a mechanism that's too fast for Sam to understand, and Bucky—fuck, where's Bucky? 

Natasha shoves Sam forward, hard, and a spray of bullets hit where his head would have been. She snaps something at him but he can't hear it above the sound of Steve yelling in the comms in his ears. 

Tony lights up the enemy combatants with a series of missiles, but there are snipers returning fire from god even fucking knows where because there aren't any fucking trees for them to be perched in. Still, Tony's suppressive fire buys them a moment of reprieve and Sam thinks he can probably get airborne, help them pick out where the snipers are and get a better picture of the whole situation.

"Don't even think about it," Bucky's voice says in his ear, since he's apparently clairvoyant now. He isn't anywhere visible, but for the purposes of survival that's a good thing.

"If we don't get eyes in the sky, we're never going to get out of this, not to mention get _into_ the base."

"Anyone who goes up there would be target practice," Steve says, on board with Bucky's line of thinking because when isn't he. 

In the corner of his eye, Sam can see the saker falcon wheeling lazily towards them, curious about the noise but careful to maintain his or her distance. "What if I ask the actual falcon what it can see?"

"Goddammit Wilson, you CAN'T ACTUALLY TALK TO BIRDS," Tony explodes, way too loudly for someone who should know exactly how well their earpieces pick up sound, on account of him being the inventor and all.

Steve Rogers, that stupid asshole, breaks cover while the enemy is actively shooting in order to stomp over to Tony and check him with his shield. It doesn’t make much difference to the Iron Man suit, but the ensuing clang is ominous enough to cause a brief ceasefire. The two of them are visibly yelling at each other, but their words barely carry above the wind, which means at some point Tony must have taken them offline. 

When Bucky gets it into his head to insert himself between Cap and Stark to try to break up the fight, Sam starts feeling tempted to double down on everybody's idiocy and jump in too. Natasha lays a cool hand on his wrist and says, calm and sure, "Well? What does the other falcon say?"

While Sam concentrates, Natasha shoots several Hydra agents dead between the eyes. 

After a moment, he says, "Apparently they're hiding some of their trap doors using foliage camouflage. There's one pretty close by, it's a fire escape exit beneath some moss. I think I can get us to it."

Tony argues, of course, but he's out-voted four to one and they army-crawl under heavy artillery discharge to a narrow pass into a chasm not quite deep enough to be called a canyon. Temporarily out of firing range, Steve and Natasha watch their backs while Sam locates a speckled rock face woolly with moss, running his hands over it until his fingers hit the edge of something too straight to be natural. He follows it up and finds a handle beneath layers of moss, and Bucky and Tony pitch in to help him pull it all off. 

The door is painted to look just like the rock it's embedded in. Even with the moss cleared away, standing up close in front of it, it's still amazingly well hidden. 

There's no time to argue about how Sam found it, because they open the door and then they all have jobs to do. 

The mission runs completely smoothly after that. They have the place shut down by the end of the day and nobody suffers anything more dramatic than a bruise. Their kill count isn't even as high as they had predicted, since half the remaining survivors surrender when it becomes obvious that they'll lose. It goes about as well as anything ever goes for them.

When they get back stateside and have to file a report about how everything went, Steve and Tony get into another fight about how to describe the way they gained entrance into the base. Sam maintains that the saker falcon told him where to look. 

Bucky stays characteristically silent, the way he does at every debriefing. But he turns it over and over again in his head, and he can't conclude with any confidence that either he or Steve would've ever spotted that door, even with their enhanced senses.

*

Steve is so heated after the meeting that he has to go walk it off. It's a testament to how far Bucky has come back to himself, back to Steve, that he knows right where to find him.

Without any conscious calculation, Bucky takes into account the time of day, the weather, the mood Steve's in, and the level of privacy he'd want. His feet take him unerringly to the little park that Steve is brooding in, as surely as if he decided to go there himself. 

For his part, Steve doesn't look the least bit surprised when Bucky appears like a silent shadow sprung from the ground and sits down next to him on the wrought iron bench.

They say nothing for a while. Bucky forces his body into a shape that should read as 'relaxed' to any passersby, while remaining on low alert for all external threats. Steve just sits hunched forward with his elbows on his knees, thinking loud enough to raise the dead. Bucky figures he can wait Steve out. It's what snipers do. 

"We would still be out there wandering around in the mountains right now if it wasn't for Sam," Steve says eventually.

"Maybe."

"He knew exactly where that door was."

"You think he's a Hydra double agent?"

Steve looks up sharply at that. Bucky tries to remember what his face used to do when he was joking, does his best to make it do something similar now.

"You're a jerk," Steve says, shoulders slumping slightly with relief. He sounds so fond that for a moment Bucky almost panics, because just how is a person supposed to cope with that much affection? 

He opens and closes his left hand with soft clicks just for an excuse to look down at it. "I don't really remember it," he says in warning, cautioning Steve not to get too happy, "but from what I can put together you always fought with Stark's old man too."

"It's not—" Steve makes an aborted sound of frustration. "I know Tony isn't his father. That's not what's happening here. It's more like, well, Tony's supposed to be one of us, on our side. He shouldn't treat Sam like..."

"Like the rest of the world might if they heard about him talking to birds all the time," Bucky supplies when Steve trails off.

"Yeah. That."

"Well, I don't know about you, but I ain't planning on blabbing to every reporter I see about it." It's another joke, because Bucky has never done anything except disappear when he sees reporters.

Steve turns on the bench to look at him a bit more fully. He's got a look in his eyes that Bucky dimly remembers, the one that says he wants Bucky to listen to him and believe him, the one he used to get when he was real little and swore he'd get big and strong and help people someday. "Buck, I swear, it wouldn't even matter if I thought they'd be nice about it. I'm not embarrassed or anything. He can talk to birds til he's blue in the face and all the little baby owls beg him to shut up so they can sleep. I just don't want them to tell him he's crazy."

Bucky knows. He knows Steve. But knowing isn't any use because there is nothing else he can say to that. 

A seagull waddles by then, on its way to join its fellows rooting through some upturned garbage. It stops for a moment to look at them with one eye, bright and black like an obsidian marble. It feels like a portent. On an impulse, Bucky meets Steve's eyes before he turns and says to the gull, "Please tell Sam that he is loved."

**Author's Note:**

> "Ornithomancy is an Ancient Greek practice of reading omens from the actions of birds. Although it was mainly the flights and songs of birds that were studied, any action could have been interpreted to either foretell the future or relate a message from the gods."
> 
> A note on interpretation: maybe Sam actually does have the ability to speak to birds, or maybe he had an intense fantasy at that childhood stage before the brain has fully learned to tell real from fiction, or (my favourite possibility) maybe in a past life Sam had that ability and the memory of it stuck with him into this life. Anyway, thank you so much for reading. My main source for bird information was the Peterson Field Guides. Feedback gratefully welcomed here or [on tumblr](http://riseagainphoenix.tumblr.com/post/124888918257/ornithomancy-archive-of-our-own).


End file.
